Orchid
by Lizard Pie
Summary: He'd finally been talked into settling down, but Silver wasn't grown for something like that.


The first beer we'd ever shared had been when we were far too young to tell anyone we had. Silver just popped up one day, as he was so apt to do, and held up a six pack like it was the most valuable prize in the entire world. Knowing Silver then and now, I don't think he necessarily wanted to share his treasure with me. I think he just wanted to share it period, and I was the only one he knew who wouldn't scold him and snatch it away. Or, for that matter, would stay around him long enough to do anything at all.

Thrilled to be able to act adult, we snuck off into the woods and cracked the bottles open. The beer was cheap, lukewarm, and most likely stolen, but we gulped it down and pretended it was delicious.

When it quickly rushed to our heads, and our voices became thick with liquor, Silver had let slip more than he ever would have otherwise. According to his slurring, his family lived somewhere green. He knew it was true, he'd seen it in a dream. When I told him that what he described sounded suspiciously like my house, he didn't seem to think it was important enough to acknowledge. He announced that, when his work was done, he'd go back and stay there forever.

When I woke up with the hangover of my life, he was gone.

Years later I assumed his work was finally complete because his travels moved from erratic while highly planned to just aimless. After years of careful nagging and unnecessarily difficult treks to locate him each time he ran, I'd finally convinced him that it was time to settle down. Being the farthest he could go from Viridian, he took a studio apartment in Olivine. It was meager, to be sure, but it had a view of the sea and a fully-functional bathroom and kitchen. His furniture consisted of a cot and a shelving unit built into the wall, but still…

I don't know if Green or I could possibly count how many ecstatic messages he'd sent us about how he was sleeping in _his_ bed or making dinner in _his_ kitchen. Silver was (and still is, I think) the only guy in the world who could have pride in his voice while talking about how _his_ shower was broken and only spewed scalding hot water.

I guess the honeymoon period was over by the time I made it there to visit, as the tour consisted of 'this is it'. The apartment warranted that, of course, but it was hard to believe with how long he'd gone on about it.

His beer was cold, though, and the fact we drank it on the floor because his Weavile had claimed the bed for a nap wasn't all that important.

Silver's life was far less exciting than it had been when we'd run with the other Pokédex holders. He worked 2 jobs, and trained with his team 4 days a week for battles which never happened. It was nothing he considered to be worth talking about at any sort of length.

What he felt was far more important was that I was attending University. Everything I told him seemed to spark 5 more questions. His relentless interrogation probably would have gone on for hours more, had I not asked what Silver had probably (or, at least, should have) known was an inevitability. Why wasn't he enrolled in the University? He wasn't stupid, and his training was strong enough to contend with anything thrown at him.

After a pause, the excuse he settled on was that he couldn't afford the entrance fees. The city was expensive, he said, and he only made enough to live on. He most certainly wouldn't ask his father for help, not just because they were estranged but because he could never be confident about where the money came from.

But, while that all sounded plausible, it wasn't right. He wasn't near drunk enough to tell things like how incapable he was that readily.

When I pushed, he looked desperately for a topic to move to.

He'd bought an orchid, he said, and pointed to the flower that sat on his kitchen counter. The maroon and white plant was actually his second one, he admitted, because he'd over-watered the first. It was from the jungle, evidently, and sucked up the moisture in the air with the roots which drooped down the sides of the pot.

Buds would fall off, the shop keeper had told him. And then you would have to wait a few months, sometimes more, but they would come back more plentiful than before.

He didn't have the house in the country, like he'd always wanted, but he lived with plant life. It was there and beautiful, and that was what was important. It wasn't, obviously, but we didn't push it further.

I had to head back later that day, and he stayed alone in his apartment that smelled of Pokémon and cheap cologne. It was set up for a trainer, definitely, and what little storage was filled with supplies for his team, but there wasn't so much as a picture on the wall to signify that it was his. I told him a few photographs would liven it up. He grunted, which I think meant he simply didn't have anything like that.

When I got back, I checked through the records for the University. At one point, at least, Silver'd had the money he needed. So that was a lie.

His battle skills were marked as exceptional, his oral exams were the same, but that's about where the positivity ended. The scores for his multiple choice and essay exams were levels of poor which probably meant he'd barely made it half way through when they'd called time. Expected, when it was probably the first essay he'd written in his life.

Add those two together, and he was mediocre; far too much so to get into school. He went to work, but I assumed then and now that stocking shelves for minimum wage was all the more upsetting when it'd been just a few years before that people had treated him like a legend for simply holding a Pokédex…

It was two weeks before I had a break in my schedule enough to make it back to Olivine, which was much too late. It'd been a week since either of his work places had seen him. He mostly kept to himself on principle, so his fellow tenants weren't much better.

The door to his place had been left unlocked. So unlike him, unless he'd specifically hoped that someone would try to walk in.

Given the fact he'd done nothing to the place, I'd bet it took him 5 minutes to be fully packed and gone.

The only thing that had been left behind was the orchid, its flowers shriveled, dead, and cradled by its own wide leaves. The flowers gone, all that was left was a sad, bent twig. In front of the pot, he'd left a note.

_They grow back; just mist it every 2-3 weeks._

I took the pot with me. Even if it took months, years, I was sure they would.


End file.
